


Long-Distance Connection

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [9]
Category: Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Baby Poe, Covert Operations, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Pathfinders, Poe is Charming From The Start, Spy work, post-partum depression, wow there are no tags existing about that sort of thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 09:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11597991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Shara Bey deals with the fallout of her new life status. Kes Dameron more or less auditions for his role in the Rebellion. It's not much of a choice, but it's his choice. Now Shara has to make hers.





	Long-Distance Connection

Shara wiped her eyes impatiently. She’d been crying uncontrollably on and off for the better part of the day, and the med droid had assured her that it was hormonal and would even itself out, but she was really tired of it. An enormous tide of every emotion at once had bowled her over at some point when she wasn’t braced for it, and she’d spent some hours now trying to find her footing and climb back out of it, to little avail. Fortunately she’d spent most of the day waiting while other people ran around to set various things up, so it was all right. She’d taken the baby and holed herself up in a room and asked to be left alone until there was something definite to report, so apart from her father coming by once in a while to make sure she had food and drink and a chance to relieve herself, it had been just her and this little creature.

One of the many components of the tidal wave had been her realization that this little thing was a person, of course. He’d looked at her and had seemed to really be aware, for the first time, and for some reason she hadn’t been ready for that; up to now he’d just sort of been a thing, to her, and her dad had sort of explained that to her, warned her even, but it was the kind of thing you couldn’t really understand until you felt it.

This all could have been worse, except that Sento seemed so utterly unsurprised by it, and everyone kept telling her it was normal. So even though it seemed pretty certain that she’d drown, nobody else seemed to think so. She’d’ve been mad about that, except that Sento was clearly pretty sympathetic, and kept doing practical things like bringing her cold compresses for her eyes and accurately pinpointing exactly what she was next going to be overwhelmed by-- not that she had time to brace herself, but it was nice to know it wasn’t random. 

He’d also let slip that in his head the kid was already named Poe, and Shara discovered that what with everything else, she didn’t have it in her to object to the name anymore. She couldn’t really remember why she’d disliked it initially, and she kept vividly remembering the way the light had caught Kes’s eyes as he’d laughed about it, during one of their joking arguments, and it was making her cry to think of it. So the baby was Poe now, and when she could next speak coherently, she’d go fill out the dang birth certificate. She couldn’t remember either, now, if anyone else had objected to that name, but she also figured it didn’t matter, because it was her choice. 

Poe had been fussy, and had spent a bunch of the time she was crying also crying, so she figured they were both in the same boat. But, fed and changed and burped and held, he’d subsided for the most part, and was now just occasionally making little bleating noises. 

She wedged herself into a corner of the dim little nook where she’d sought refuge, and braced her knees on one wall, her back against the other, and held Poe upright against her knees so she could stare into his face. In the dim room, he had his eyes wide open, looking around, and now his gaze snapped right to her eyes, wobbly but accurate, and he blinked curiously at her and gave her one of those weird little reflexive infant-smiles.

“Hi, Poe,” she said softly. “Your Mama’s a mess. This is hard, baby.”

He wiggled; they’d been keeping him tightly wrapped, which was apparently what newborns liked, but he kept getting his hands free. He clearly had absolutely no idea what to do with them once he’d freed them, but he devoted a lot of effort and attention to freeing them, consistently. He managed to get his right arm out and flail it, and she caught it between her fingers, holding his tiny hand. He curled his whole hand around her finger and grabbed on, never taking his wobbly attention off her face, and made a bleaty little noise that might have been displeasure or might have been triumph, she couldn’t tell.

“I know,” she said anyway. Sometimes it was a fine line between the two. “Listen, kid. You were so good at posing for the holocam so we could send your daddy a pic. Can I ask you to do it again? They’re telling me they’re trying to arrange a real live almost-no-lag holocall with him, maybe today, and I need you to be awake enough to look cute but not so awake that you scream the whole time. Do you think that’s a tall order?” 

She contemplated him, moving her finger a little so that his arm shook back and forth, his grip the only steady thing about him. He was just a double handful of a thing, a little bundle, so small he could almost still just be part of her body-- and one of the overwhelming emotional things she was trying to get a handle on was her body’s visceral reaction to having grown an entire new thing that was now not a part of it anymore, and how foreign her body felt now, how weirdly-shaped and unresponsive and not-hers. She’d been looking forward to having full ownership of her body again, to not having something move autonomously in it anymore, but it wasn’t hers yet, it was still doing things she didn’t expect, and she was terrified she’d never really have her whole self entirely under her own control anymore. 

She hadn’t managed to really look at herself and take stock of the situation yet, but she knew she wasn’t going to look like she’d used to. She’d just sort of expected to be more sanguine about it than this. 

Poe kicked her in the belly and wriggled, hanging onto her finger with more strength than someone so little ought to have, and grunting with the effort. “I know,” she said again, though it was meaningless. “I know, kid. Just do your best, that’s all I can ask for.”

Then she had to cry, thinking about maybe getting to see Kes’s face, maybe in real-time, maybe in motion. Stars, would she ever-- “Will he ever get to hold you, baby?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tears away. “Will he get to meet you for real? What are we gonna do, Poe?”

She’d been so certain in her decision to just--  _ go to him _ , and she’d even gone as far as looking up the mileage and route to get to that sector, and looked into renting a craft, but the logistics rapidly overwhelmed her. Poe couldn’t travel yet, so she’d considered leaving him behind, but there was a big screaming thing buried in her chest that couldn’t let her consider that. Maybe  _ she _ couldn’t travel yet, but she’d never had a problem like this and she didn’t know how to continue. She couldn’t take Poe with her but she couldn’t go without him either, and she was stuck there, not knowing what to do instead.

Apparently all of Kes’s relatives were going to show up here,  _ all _ all of them. They’d planned-- and stars, it seemed so long ago, now-- that when the baby was safe to travel, they’d return to the family compound and have a big party for his naming. This wasn’t going to be that, though. This was because Lita was compromised to the Empire and had to disappear-- she was already listed as having left the planet, and they’d set it up to be a plausible manifest error should anyone come checking up on it, and there were clearly a lot of experienced people working on the problem. It seemed to Shara that they ought to be having this meeting somewhere else, but apparently this was better because it would allow the rest of the Oaxctli to officially disavow Lita.

And Kes, which stung. 

“It’s not fair,” she said to Poe. She hadn’t said it to anyone else, because it didn’t help and just felt like whining-- okay, she’d sobbed it into her father’s shoulder at some point, and probably had shrieked it a few times while in the throes of labor, but none of that counted. “It’s just not fair, Poe. Kes never did anything wrong in his entire life.” She was sobbing again, and Poe was holding onto her finger, and she knew he didn’t understand enough about anything to be truly intending to comfort her, but she was taking it as comfort. “It’s not fair, baby. All he wanted was you, and me, and to be good.”

Her sobs turned racking, and she curled herself in, pressing her face close to the baby’s. He let go of her finger to grab her nose, after a little while, and she laughed at that even as she kept crying. The bitterest part of it was how much, she knew, Kes would want this, how beyond delighted he’d be with Poe, and how crushed he must be to miss out on all of this. Shara’s imagination couldn’t entirely encompass the fact that Kes had been literally tortured, but she could intimately imagine how he must feel about this, and it hurt to think about. Yes, she wanted to see Kes, she wanted to touch him and hold him-- but more, she wanted him to see Poe, wanted him to hold Poe and know him. He’d be better at this than she was, was maybe the worst part of it all. She’d kind of been counting on him to be, and it wasn’t fair. It just-- wasn’t fair.

She cried for a while, and after a bit of it Poe started to cry too, so she started trying to compose herself. If nothing else, Sento would be by, and while he knew fine well what she was doing, she still wanted to be coherent enough to speak. She sat up and breathed and re-did all of Poe’s wrappings, hiccuping and wiping her face. “It’s just not fair,” she said thickly to Poe, who regarded her solemnly, hands trapped again. “If I could trade places with him, I would.” 

It wouldn’t work, but she would if she could and that had to mean something.

Poe scrunched up his face, and she scrunched hers up at him, and only after a moment did she sniff and say, “Are you pooping, kid?”

Sento knocked softly at the door of the little room-- it was a closet, she knew, there just wasn’t anything in it, so she’d shoved some pillows and blankets in and made herself a safe little misery nest-- and when she answered, opened it. “Whoo,” he said, “somebody took a shit. I hope it’s the baby.”

“It’s Poe,” she said, managing a laugh, “not me, and that just happened, I haven’t been sitting in here wallowing in it.”

Sento laughed, and held out his arms. Gratefully, she handed the baby over before un-wedging herself from the corner. “I’ll clean him up,” he said, “and you go clean yourself up. Word just came through, Kes is on a neutral planet where he can make a holocall and they’re setting it up for a quarter hour from now.”

“Really,” Shara said, pausing. She put a hand to her face, which she could feel was swollen.

“Yes,” Sento said. “So get a cold compress on there, girl, and I’ll get this tiny stinkmonster spruced up.” She nodded, and he started to move away from the door, but then turned back. “What did you call him?”

Shara blinked, then mentally rewound. “Poe,” she said, a little shyly. 

“I didn’t pressure you into it,” Sento said. 

“No, Papa,” she said. “You’re right, it fits. I think he likes it.”

Sento cackled quietly. “I’m gettin’ a good track record about bein’ right about this kind of thing,” he said. 

She kissed him on the cheek as she went past. “You have a good record overall, Papa,” she said. “It was hard-earned, I’m not knocking it.”

He looked a bit misty-eyed about it, so she followed up by patting him on the shoulder and saying, “Enjoy that poop.”

  
  


* * *

  


  
  


“Andor better be right about you,” the sergeant muttered, almost too quietly to hear. Kes knew better than to answer, keeping his face innocently impassive as the customs agent came down the line examining the ship manifests. He was dressed the part and prepped for a role as a cargo importer, so they’d have a chance to do a resupply run for some esoteric supplies. In his pocket he had a datachip he was supposed to slip to the holosuite operator, of encrypted communications to send under the guise of the holocall he was making. 

And to avoid suspicion over the extremely-expensive holocall he was making with Alderaanian credits, Kes had been set up with identity holos identifying him as a wealthy young heir to an Alderaanian shipping conglomerate. 

On the surface of it, it seemed absurd. Kes had never lied in his life. He’d initially been reluctant to take on the mission. But with the prospect of getting to make a real-time holocall and see Shara-- and the son whose squishy little face he’d seen now in a still holo, with only a brief written message from Shara accompanying it-- was enough to push him past his reluctance. And, now that he thought on it, he’d played plenty of parts in his life. He’d attended many social engagements surrounded by wealthy young Alderaanians who had absently considered him a peer, and it had been easy enough to just mimic their accents and manners so as not to be noticed. He could do that now. It was the same as resisting interrogation: you picked a truth in your mind and adhered to it, unto death. 

He was no longer afraid. And he wasn’t really nervous, either. He just wanted very badly to get the fuck out of here and make that holocall.

It wasn’t an Intelligence op; Andor wasn’t here, because it wasn’t his mission. There was no information Kes needed to gather in return, no investigation to conduct, no contacts to make beyond the handing over of the chip. 

So it had fallen to the Pathfinders, whose specialty wasn’t the gathering of information, but rather in- and exfiltration. And if this was to double as a kind of audition for Kes, to prove to them he had the chops for them to consider adding him to their ranks, well, it was just convenient. They were ostensibly just doing a favor to Andor (or really, to Organa) by bringing Kes along, but it had been made clear it could be more than that.

The agent took the manifest from Kes, who handed it over as if bored. In his mind, he was impersonating Unbi Hallo, who hung around many of the Organas’ social functions and pretended that he hadn’t ever worked a day in his life. The fellow never seemed to pay attention to anything, but missed nothing. He was the second son of a cloth merchant who’d risen from moderate to extreme wealth by great canniness, and Unbi was sharper than his fop of an older brother, but no less fashionable. 

Unbi also drank a lot, so it was easy enough to ape his hung-over manner to explain Kes’s lingering unsteadiness and headache. He squinted at the agent when the man didn’t immediately hand back the manifest. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked, jerking his chin at the manifest.

The customs agent peered suspiciously at him. He was a reedy, middle-aged man, in Imperial uniform, and Kes pegged him as banished to a backwater planet and resenting it. “How long have you had this particular craft?”

Kes made an annoyed, disgusted noise. “This particular one?” He grimaced, turned and looked at it, turned and looked back at the man. “I don’t know, two years? I have a dozen, I don’t keep track. It’s not like they’re sentimental.”

“True,” the agent said, slightly mollified. 

Kes turned toward the sergeant. “Horu, how long have you been with us, three years? Do you remember if this ship is older or newer than you?”

“Uh-- no, sir, I don’t,” the sergeant said, disconcerted but not unduly so. 

Kes looked back at the agent. “I can look it up for you, if you like,” he said. “How important is it?” The key was to be profoundly bored, but not disrespectful. Unbi was a master of using the angle of his shoulders to either include or exclude someone, marking them as either a co-sufferer or a cause of his boredom. Kes was doing his best to include the agent as a co-sufferer, without seeming too friendly. 

“No,” the agent said, “you’re right, it’s not really important. I was just wondering.”

Kes shrugged. “I don’t mean to be uncooperative,” he said. The agent lingered a moment, and Kes suddenly snapped his fingers, lighting up. “Oh! You have those yacht races out this way, do you know how that, oh, what’s his name? That awful little-- Perlin, do you know how Perlin did? I had money on him and then I missed the broadcast.”

“You actually put money on him?” the agent said. “After the scandal?”

“Pshht,” Kes said, waving a hand. “Shit like that makes people bet against and raises the odds, better payout if you’re right.”

The agent shook his head. “He won,” he said. “I can’t believe you really bet on him, almost nobody did.”

“Ha  _ ha _ ,” Kes said, waving triumphantly. “I’d better make a call, make sure nobody’s wriggled out of that bet!”

“You had better,” the agent said indulgently, and handed back the manifest. “There are a couple of places down that way with decent comm suites.” He jerked his head toward the area Kes was meant to head into.

“Mm,” Kes said, “I think we have an account with one of them. Yes, thank you.” He switched the screen off on the datapad with the manifest, and tucked it under his arm, then visibly checked himself and turned back to the agent. “Did you need anything else?”

“No,” the agent said, amused. “No, you’d better go make that call.”

“I had better,” Kes said. He made to leave, then paused as if he’d remembered something, and turned back to the sergeant to hand him the datapad. “I’ll call our guy here first,” he said to the sergeant, “don’t look at me like that, I’m not  _ only _ about the gambling.”

The agent moved on, and the sergeant gave Kes a somewhat-incredulous look. Kes winked at him, then turned away and set off toward the place where he was supposed to make the holocall. 

He had a moment of profound unreality, where he was sure this wasn’t real. He hadn’t just-- pretended to be someone else, he wasn’t really on a strange planet with a greenish-tinted sun making his way down a dusty flagstone alley, this was a holo he was watching or something, he wasn’t-- but he paused for a moment, looked up at the sky, pressed the palm of his hand against the nearest wall. No, he was here. This was real. He was doing this.

He’d been told to look for a sign with a stylized lightning bolt and the name  _ Banati’s _ , and he saw it down the street. Instead of running straight to it, he ducked into what looked like a newsagent’s. It was, in fact, and he bought a minute on the open holonet to verify his story about the yacht race. It took him ten seconds-- he’d overheard someone talking about it, two of the officers in one of the facilities where he’d been interrogated had talked about the scandal, and then two of the Pathfinders had been talking about the race results on the flight here-- so he spent the rest of the time looking at holos of Alderaan. There was a great recent picture of Leia Organa as a Senator, looking grown-up and imposing and flawless, and he wondered if she were there now, if she’d seen Shara, if she knew anything about the Rebellion, if she’d been able to tell them anything.

The minute ran out, and Kes went back out and made his way down the street to Banati’s, grateful that it was dim in there. His head hurt badly, and the greenish sun wasn’t helping. The flight here had been miserable and he’d spent the whole thing hanging onto what little composure he could muster with both hands. He had to make this work. This was his only chance to talk directly to-- well, anyone. He wasn’t sure who they were planning to muster up to speak with him, and he wanted it to be Shara but he would accept just about anyone who could tell him directly what was going on.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked, and he looked up at the person who had come out from a back room. The person was a Shozer, a smallish one, with the delicate patterning of scales above the eyes that usually indicated a female or-- there was a subcategory of males who had that kind of pattern too, Kes was rusty on the specifics. 

“Ah,” he said, and patted his pockets, finding his forged identichip and the holochip he was supposed to hand over. “I think I, my family that is, have an account here? I needed to place a call.”

The Shozer nodded, a certain nonchalant and knowing quality appearing in her posture. “I see,” she said. “Kanto?”

That was the false surname on his identity chip, Kes remembered just in time, and said, “Yes, that’s it.” She held out one paw-- hand?-- and he put both chips into it. She made much of looking at the identichip, and when she handed it back, it was the only thing in her hand. 

“Yes,” she said. “I assume you’ll be wanting to call the family in Alderaan, then?”

“Yes,” he said. “I need to check in. But, of course, privately?”

“Of course,” she said, mildly affronted. 

She showed him into a tiny little cubby of a room, and switched on the console. It came up to speed with a barely-audible whine that set Kes’s teeth on edge and felt like a knife in his already-aching head. “The transmission will go through first,” she said, voice low. “I’ll get it started and it can run in the background, it won’t noticeably increase the lag.”

“Good,” he said vaguely, “good good.” 

“Have a seat,” she said a little louder, “let me just establish the connection.”

He sat in the only available chair, an uncomfortable-looking little stool. Was this tiny room going to be a problem for him? He eyed it nervously, listening to the whine of equipment coming online, and decided that no, it wasn’t going to, by sheer force of will if nothing else. 

He was going to get to see his son. It didn’t matter if they gave him electric shocks the whole time, it would be worth it.

“It’ll probably take about a quarter of an hour to set up the call,” she said, sounding a little apologetic. “I’ve got a ping back, so they’re preparing on their end. Apparently your party is available, though, I got that much.”

“Good,” Kes said, perking up a little. 

“I’m going to just get this file transfer started,” she said, “and then I’m going to bring you a cup of caf or water or something, because you look awful.”

“I would greatly appreciate some water,” he said. 

She nodded. “Space sickness?” 

“Something like that,” he said.

She was working on something, intently arranging columns of data, and he watched as the data connection went through and the indicator showed the file transfer initiating. “There we go,” she said. “Wait here, I’ll just be a moment.”

Kes let his eyes go unfocused, watching the file transfer status bar crawl slowly across the interface. The point was that it was already encrypted, so they didn’t need any specialized equipment on this end. He had no idea what the chip actually contained, what it was that they had to send directly to the Alderaanian royal residence. Because he knew that was where this call was going. 

Oh, shit, he was going to see Shara, probably, and she was going to see him, and he probably looked like an idiot. He ran his hands over his hair-- at least he’d shaved, back on Yavin, though he’d let the stubble grow in a little since then for the disaffected hung-over shipping magnate’s heir persona he was adopting here. There was no mirror, he’d have to just trust that he looked like himself. At least his hair was too short to disarrange much. 

The Shozer came back and handed him a tall glass of very cold water with a little sprig of something greenish-blue in it, presumably a leaf they flavored things with around here. He took it gratefully. 

“This is going to a pretty restricted exchange,” she said. 

He smiled. “Some of my family are enjoying the hospitality of the royal family,” he said. “It’s a long story, but it does make for interesting calls home.”

“I imagine,” she said. “Oh, I like that phrase.”

“It’s the truth,” he said, and shrugged. “My mother’s very ill and my wife’s just given birth.”

“It’s not just a cover story?” She looked interested. 

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s honestly the truth.”

She went and dealt with a customer, and he sat in the dim quiet and drank the water slowly, trying both to compose himself and to keep an ear out in case she was really betraying him. There was always that chance. 

She came back and said, “It’s coming through, are you ready?”

“Ready,” he said, swallowing hard and setting the now-empty water glass aside. 

She threw a switch and the holo flickered to life. It was Norasol, who was looking over her shoulder. He tried to speak but sound wouldn’t come out. In a second she turned her head and saw him and startled visibly. “Oh!” she said. “It’s live. It’s-- live? Kes?”

“Tia,” he said, and it came out hoarse. 

“Looks all set,” the Shozer said, and backed out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind herself. 

“Kes,” Norasol said, staring at him. “Oh, my baby-- are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” he said, and it came out clearer. “I got the last message, with the holo--” 

“Oh good,” Norasol said. “Oh-- oh good.” She had begun to cry. He’d rarely ever in his life seen Norasol actually cry, so it was disconcerting. 

“Don’t-- I’m all  _ right _ ,” he said. “It’s okay. Hackle feathers,” he added, an old code phrase that should still serve.

“Shara’s-- she’s coming, with the baby,” Norasol said, wiping her face. 

“How is my mother?” he asked urgently. “They said she was hurt, badly, but--”

“She’s recovering,” Norasol said, looking up directly into the holocam. “They did hurt her pretty badly. She’s also-- been upset, you know? I think she was well enough to be on this call but she declined, she wanted you to have more time with Shara and Poe.”

“I’m not angry with her,” Kes said. “You need to tell her that, I’m not angry with her. I understand.”

Norasol burst into fresh tears. “Of course you’d say that,” she said. “You impossible child.”

“Just tell her,” he said, exasperated. “Hackle feathers, Mama Bear.”

“I will, baby bird,” Norasol said, recovering some composure. “I’ll-- I’ll tell her. Here’s Shara.”

She slid out of the frame, and Shara sat down, with a bundle in her arms, and leaned in, looking up into the holocam rig. “Kes?”

“Shara,” he said. She looked-- she was wearing her own jacket, again, with a blouse he didn’t recognize, and her hair was tidily twisted up, her lips gleaming with her usual lipgloss. She looked good, but her face seemed a little swollen, eyes red. 

“You look awful,” she said, eyebrows pinching together a little. 

He made a noise that might have been a laugh, he wasn’t sure. “You look really good,” he said. “Except maybe you’ve been crying.”

“I have,” she said, and laughed. “Papa says it’s hormonal, I couldn’t stop crying all morning, I wasn’t even-- I mean, I’m upset about things, but it was like,” and she gestured a little with one hand in front of her face. The bundle in her arms shifted, and she turned a little, trying to angle the holocam into the little bundle’s face. 

“Look,” she said to the bundle. “Look, Poe, it’s your Papa!”

There was a face there after all; the infant stirred, blinking up at the holocam, the reflection of Kes’s projection blue across his face. He looked like he had in the still holo-- little and squishy and not really like anybody yet, just a tiny creased newborn face. A very small fist waved, and disappeared back into the enveloping blankets. 

And then Kes processed what she’d said. “You said you hated that name,” he said. 

“I can’t think of a better one,” Shara said, and laughed. It sounded a little ragged; she’d started crying again. “Anyway he looks like a Poe. I don’t know how you called it in utero but you were right.”

“I know things,” Kes said. He felt like he’d gotten hit in the chest and face with something big and flat. It was hard to remember to breathe. That thing was alive, that was a baby, that was  _ his _ baby. “Poe,” he said, fumbling around the edges of that enormous feeling like he could somehow pick it up. 

“He’s perfect, Kes,” she said. “He’s big and he’s got all his parts and he’s doing all the things babies are supposed to do, he eats and wiggles and poops and looks at stuff, he cries and gurgles and the scans all say everything’s good.”

“Wow,” Kes said, because there wasn’t really any other thing to say. Poe wriggled and made a little bleating noise, and Shara shifted to hold him more comfortably. “Are-- are you--”

“I’m okay too,” she said. “I think the adrenaline was-- I kind of got carried away and was trying to do too much right after he was born, but I didn’t hurt myself, I just had to rest. It’s all--” She wiped her eyes, and then looked at him intently. “Kes, they said you’re staying there, you’re not going to come back, is that true?”   
As ever, she was quicker on the uptake than he was, and quicker to move to the next point. Kes collected himself a little. “I can’t come back,” he said. “I can’t come to Alderaan, they’ll just pick me up again.”

“Did they hurt you?” Shara asked, distressed. 

Kes took a breath, and then let it out. “I mean,” he said. “Not permanently. But they released me to see where I’d go, so clearly, they wanted me to run straight back to Alderaan, and I’m not doing them that favor.”

“But that doesn’t mean you have to stay with the Alliance,” Shara said. 

Kes managed to tear his gaze away from the squishy, creased face of his son-- his  _ son _ \-- and look at her. “No,” he said, “but it seems to me like the best thing to do. I have information they can use, now. And the Empire has marked me. Nowhere I go will be safe, so--”

“You could take a new name,” Shara said. “Get a new identity. They wouldn’t find you.”

Kes hadn’t even really considered that. He had a fake identichip already. It was a good fake, he could get work with it. But even as he thought of that, he shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to see my family,” he said.

“You’d be able to see  _ me _ ,” she said. 

And there it was, really. He’d have to give up everything, even his own name, and his family, and his dreams of finding a safe place with the extended family and all his people. But he could be with Shara, and with Poe. 

“Would you want that?” he asked, after discarding several other sentence fragments. “I don’t know who I would be, if not myself. I-- I want to be with you, I want-- to be with Poe-- more than I can say, but I’d-- who would I be? And what would I do?”

“You could find out,” she said. 

He hadn’t even really considered the idea. It was-- not something he had imagined, not something he’d have found palatable. But-- that was a baby, that was  _ his _ baby, and that, concretely, was the only thing he had truly ever really wanted, for himself. 

“Are you free to go?” she asked. “Have they convinced you that you have to stay with them, have to fight for them, or could you leave them if you wanted?”

He  _ could _ leave them. Andor had said as much. “I,” he said. “I mean-- I’m free to go, if that’s what you’re asking, but where can I go that they won’t find me? Even with false documentation? Even for--” He shook his head. “I can’t run forever. And what kind of life would that be, for our son?” It hurt, it hurt to say it, it felt like he was rejecting them. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment wherein she watched him keenly, face unreadable. “I can’t. I have to-- someone has to stand and fight, and I didn’t want it to be me, this isn’t what I would have chosen, but I have to. I have to do this. I know things that can help them, and-- believe me, all I want is to be with you and be with our son and, and I’m not just saying that, it’s literally the only thing I have ever wanted-- but I can’t run like that.” He shook his head. “Even if I really thought they’d never find me.”

She looked at him for a moment longer, and he said, “I’m sorry,” again. 

She smiled slowly, a sad smile. “That was what I wanted to hear, Kes,” she said. “I don’t-- I just wanted to know that you knew you had a choice, still, even now.”

“It’s not much of a choice,” he said, “but it  _ is _ my choice.”

“I love you,” she said, and a tear ran down next to her nose as she smiled. “Listen. I’m going to join up too, I just-- I can’t, yet. I can’t bring Poe with me, and I can’t bear to leave him behind yet either.”

“You don’t have to join up,” Kes said.

“But I do,” she said. “I can’t just wait for them to come get me. I can make a difference, I know I can.”

“They won’t station us together,” Kes said. 

“I know that,” she said. “Either way, we won’t see each other. But Papa promised he’d stay with Poe. And I can’t just-- wait for you. I need to go out and do something, too.”

It was too much to fit inside Kes, and he wrapped his arms around his chest as if he could hold himself together that way. “Okay,” he said. “But-- there’s no hurry, Shara. You need to take your time. Don’t rush into anything.”

“I won’t rush,” she said, wiping her face again. “I won’t, Kes. I know. I need to spend some time with this baby.”

It hurt. “I wish I could meet him,” Kes said. 

“He’s not asleep,” Shara said. “I don’t know why he’s being so quiet, he’s usually much squirmier than this. I think he’s zoning out on the blue light. He can’t really focus his eyes yet but he’s watching you.”

“Is he a good baby?” Kes asked. It was a dumb question.

Shara laughed. “He is,” she said. “He-- there wasn’t much pain, it wasn’t bad at all. It’s all just-- weird, but not-- entirely bad. And he’s-- I know babies don’t look like anything, really, not at first, but he looks like you, a little. Oh, he sucks his thumb, too. It’s really cute.”

“Does he,” Kes said softly, wonderingly. She angled her body so the child’s face was more directly in line with the corder, and Kes could see his features. His eyes were open, dark irises, clearly watching the projection of Kes, little mouth working absently. Sure enough, in a moment, he moved his little fist and found his thumb, slotting it into his mouth and fastening down on it. Instantly, his eyes went half-closed, as it seemed to soothe him. 

He made a soft little sighing noise, just loud enough for the ‘corder to pick up, and Kes and Shara both laughed. “Someone was already trying to tell me not to let him suck his thumb,” Shara said. “That it was going to be bad for his teeth. I promise you, if he had teeth, I’d know. Papa says we can worry about that in five to seven years.”

“He’ll have teeth before that,” Kes said.

“Milk teeth,” Shara said. 

“Oh,” Kes said. “Right. Well, I mean. I guess I have to leave the parenting decisions to you,” and that was painful and strange to say, “but for the record, you’re right.”

“My Papa has been giving me good advice,” she said, with a slightly-watery laugh. 

“Has-- I figured Norasol would be fussing at you more than you strictly wanted,” Kes said.

Shara shook her head. “She’s been extremely distracted,” she said. “She was there for the birth and had a lot of advice, and it was mostly pretty helpful, but she’s been really-- she  _ seems _ to be holding up well, but I think she’s taken it all very hard, Kes, I don’t think she’s doing well at all, she’s still on the outs with your mother, there’s just-- I’m avoiding it, I have too much to do, and I’m hoping she can work it out for herself, but. She’s so torn up over you, Kes. It’s been hardest on her of anyone, I think, because she’s expected to be the one who’s okay.”

“Oh,” Kes said. He hadn’t really anticipated that at all.

“You know? She’s not giving birth and she’s not injured so she should be fine. But we thought you were dead, Kes, and Lita’s a mess about it, and Norasol’s doing her best but I’m concerned for her. Did you get to talk to her at all? I know she was here when the call connected.”

“I did,” Kes said, “but just a little. Tell her I love her, hey? We were talking about Mama and it upset her.”

“Yeah,” Shara said dryly, “that’s-- yeah. Oh they’re having a-- I don’t know what to call it. Everyone’s coming to choose a new leader since Lita’s compromised. Shit, Norasol was going to talk to you about it, did she?”

“No,” Kes said. Of course Lita was compromised. Of course they’d need-- “Tito. My vote’s Tito.”

“What?” Shara blinked at him.

“For a replacement,” he said. “Tito won’t want it but he can do it.” Tito had trailed along to a few of the meetings Kes hadn’t gone to, as a kid, and some alongside Kes. When they’d had to look extra-endearing, Lita had dressed them in matching outfits and dragged them to various events. Tito wasn’t as versed in that sort of thing as Kes, but he’d also lived a clean life, as Kes had, barred from any activity either in the gang or associated with the Rebellion. Most of them were clean like that, but Tito had been spotlight-ready too. He hadn’t seen it that way, but Kes sure had. 

“Oh,” Shara said. 

“It’ll hurt to lose his income,” Kes said, “especially since they’ve just lost mine, but he can do the diplomatic stuff, I know he can.”

“Oh,” Shara said again, but this time with the air of someone who had caught up. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell her. How are we on time?”

“I don’t know,” Kes said. He looked at the holocorder. “Shit, we’re over five minutes by now, I don’t know how long we’re allowed to use this thing.”

Shara nodded ruefully. “I just wanted to see your face,” she said, “and hear in your own voice that you’re not being forced to do anything.” Tears started, and her face crumpled. “And that you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Kes said. He wished, painfully, that he could touch her, could smell her hair and feel the warmth of her body, maybe bury his face in the crook of her neck. Instead he tried to memorize her, the same habitual curl where the hair always escaped next to her face, the changing line of her chin and neck as the pregnancy swelling went away from her tissues.

“They told me that you were tortured,” Shara said. 

“It was bad,” Kes said, “but when it was over it stopped. They didn’t permanently damage anything. I figured out how it worked, there’s a system.” 

Poe made a little bleating noise and wriggled, thumb popping out of his mouth. He flailed and squeaked, then let loose with a solid wail.

“Good lungs,” Kes said, delighted. 

“Oh, sweetie,” Shara said, “you’ve been so good. Shh, shh, baby.” She changed her grip, picking him up to hold him upright against her shoulder. He grizzled and grumbled a little, then wailed again, and she patted his back as he rooted around and found his thumb again. “That’s my sweet boy,” she said, and turned her head, looking at someone out of the holocorder’s range. 

“I think we’ll have to terminate the connection in a moment,” a voice said, and it took Kes a moment to make out that it was none other than Queen Breha. “I can give you another minute, but that might be pushing the limits of suspicion.”

Shara looked at Kes. “I think we’ve,” she said, and paused to compose herself. “Said what we needed to.” 

Kes nodded. “If the file’s sent.”

“It just completed,” Breha said. 

“Then we’d better disconnect,” Kes said. 

Shara nodded tightly, eyes brimming but expression taut and brave. “I’ll send more holos,” she said.

“I love you,” Kes said, remembering to blink slowly for the signal. Then he remembered that was something he and his mother knew, not Shara. Well, it didn’t matter. He fixed his eyes back on her face, trying to memorize her.

Shara’s tears spilled down her cheeks, and she smiled tightly. “Love you too,” she said. 

“I have to disconnect now,” Breha said. Kes nodded, and so did Shara, and the holo went dark. 

The tiny room was very dark, suddenly, and a little light blinked, a status light: Disconnected. File transfer complete. 

Kes gathered himself, wiped his face, and looked up as the door opened. “The call disconnected?” the Shozer asked. 

He nodded. “The other party ended it,” he said. He stood up, wiping his face again, composing himself. “Only fair, since they’re paying the charges.”

The Shozer laughed. “Of course,” she said. She gestured oddly with her head, grin going a little fixed, and said, “Oh, sweetie, could you grab me that water glass?”

“Of course,” he said, trying to figure out what her expression meant. He picked up the water glass and stood up, bringing it to her. She took it, and put the data chip he’d given her when he’d come in back into his hand, widening her eyes a little. 

He looked out past her into the hallway, and he heard someone’s comm go off. Someone was here. Imperials maybe. He took the data chip and shoved it down the back of his pants, and she nodded approvingly. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but there’d usually be a recording available of the call, and it just didn’t engage.”

“Oh,” he said, managing to sound dismayed instead of confused. “Well, you know, sometimes it doesn’t. I was prepared for that, I’ve had that problem before.” She smiled tightly at him, and walked with him out into the main foyer. 

There were two Stormtroopers standing there, and one of them was holding a datapad and looking officiously attentive. “The logs seem complete,” the Stormtrooper said, voice muffled by the vocoder. 

“Of course,” she said. “We don’t make unlogged transmissions.”

“It’s just that little problem with the recordings not always engaging,” the Stormtrooper said. “We’re just concerned about that, the recording is supposed to be part of the service that people are paying for.”

And that the Empire could use to monitor the content of communications, clearly, Kes realized, and he wondered if they’d been summoned by the fact that this call was placed to a royal-owned comm suite in Alderaan. They’d picked this planet because it was a good mix of well-policed and not-too-closely-surveilled, but clearly they’d erred too far in the latter direction, if this patrol had responded within the twenty minutes or so of connection establishment.

“Oh,” Kes said, “don’t worry on  _ my _ account, it was mostly a personal call.” He actually hadn’t made very many planet-to-planet holocalls like that, they were fantastically expensive, so he wasn’t sure what the actual terms and conditions usually were. And then he remembered an old grifter’s trick from one of the sodden messes of humanity he’d dormed with on some godforsaken spaceport, who had told a lot of entertaining stories. Overload them with personal information. He tugged the little holochip-viewer thingy he carried everywhere out of his inner shirt pocket, and beamed at them. “I was talking to my baby!” He toggled it on, and the holo they’d sent him of Poe came up, tiny and wrinkly and squinting and about two days old. It was the only thing on the holochip. He had no other identifying markings or documents-- except for the chip the Shozer had just given him back, clearly so that she wouldn’t have it if they searched.

It worked. “Oh, uh, wow,” said one of the Stormtroopers-- did they have babies? Was there parental leave for Stormtroopers? Did that mean they had sex lives?-- backing up a little awkwardly. Kes was too distraught to let himself think more about it.

“He’s almost a week old now,” Kes said. “I was so upset I couldn’t avoid this trip, it was all supposed to happen before he was born but we got delayed and had to go now, so I’ve been calling home from every port. He only knows me as a holo, but I’ll meet him soon!”

“Oh, he’s precious,” the Shozer simpered, leaning in to look. “He has your eyes!”

“He does,” Kes said, and he didn’t have to feign any emotion here, this was all genuine. “Anyway his mother is holocamming every instant of his existence, I’m sure she recorded that call on her end, and I’ll get my copy when I get home. But I won’t need it, because I’ll have my baby in my arms, and I’ll never go away again.”

“Is this your first?” the Shozer asked. 

“Oh yes,” Kes said. “I could barely bring myself to go away, and my mother’s sick-- but they’re staying with Rouge Organa, she promised she’d look after them personally, old friends of the family you know?-- it was the only way I could tear myself away.”

“That’s great,” one of the Stormtroopers said blankly.

“He’s perfect,” Kes said, “all his fingers and toes and things, the scans are all good, he’s doing all the things babies are supposed to do. I’m so delighted I can’t think about anything else. Except how I also won a bunch of money betting on that yacht race. But I’m going to put it all into a fund for the baby! I think it’s an omen.” He was having a little trouble remembering to use Unbi Hallo’s personality for this, but he had the feeling it didn’t really matter, as long as he bored them. To be fair, he’d never observed Unbi being actually enthusiastic about anything the way one ought to be about having a child, so he was having to make it up on the spot. 

“Okay,” the first Stormtrooper said, “that’s nice. Well, ma’am, just don’t let it happen again. There are regulations in place for a reason, and this makes three times this quarter that you’ve had equipment failures violating the recording statute.”

“I’ve had it repaired,” the Shozer said anxiously.

“I have no complaints,” Kes said. “Although,” and he laughed, “if it had recorded, I could’ve showed you the bit where my son threw up on my wife, that was really funny, you’d have loved it.”

“Oh,” the first Stormtrooper said, and even through the vocoder, the distinct lack of enthusiasm in the gender-indeterminate voice was obvious, “what a shame to miss out on that.”

“It was funny,” Kes insisted. “My baby is really cute.”

But the Stormtroopers left without further incident, and the Shozer held both of his hands in hers for a moment and let out a deep, fervent breath before she let him go. He made his way back to the docks, where the sergeant was pacing worriedly as the last of the cargo was loaded onto the ship. There were other ships around, but no one seemed to be taking any exceptional interest. Still, it wouldn’t do to report in. From the Sergeant’s expression, though, someone might have tipped him off that the holocomm place had gotten raided.

But this was no time to break character, he’d made it this far. He kept his pace consistent, and strode into their midst, waving his hands.

“Ay,” Kes said, genuinely disgusted, “what kind of operation are we running here, it looks like a fucking yard sale, you’ve just got shit strewn around everywhere. C’mon, guys, get your act together!”

“By the Maker,” the sergeant said, giving Kes a double-take, “I thought you were--”

“What,” Kes said, widening his eyes a little and leaning in. “Drunk? You thought wrong. Come on, chop chop.” He clapped his hands. “Just because I’m in a good mood and it’s great news all around doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit about load order. Whose fucking idea was it to just-- come on.”

He pitched in, because clearly nobody else in this crew had ever actually loaded cargo before, and got the little freighter’s tiny hold organized in some semblance of reasonability-- at least, the load wouldn’t shift coming out of hyper and disintegrate the whole ship-- and kept up a steady stream of in-character grousing the entire time. It was only once the door had shut that he dropped the act, planted his back against the wall, and slid to the floor.

“Xacristo,” he murmured, “sorry everybody,” and put his head between his knees to breathe for a moment. That had been a close call, too damn close.

“How did you get out?” the sergeant asked, leaning over him.

“Don’t crowd me,” Kes said, unable to keep himself from flinching and then snapping at him. The sergeant backed up obediently.  “Xacristo. I bluffed my way out, okay? I talked about my baby until their eyes glazed over.” He remembered the data chip, and pulled it out of the back of his pants, where it was digging in against the wall. His hand was shaking. “The lady running the place shoved this at me, she didn’t want to get caught with it, I thought I was going to have to swallow it.”

Both his hands were shaking. “But they let you go?” the sergeant asked. “They won’t-- you didn’t run?”

“I walked out,” Kes said. “They didn’t detain me.” He pressed his hands together, trying to still them. 

“And the file transfer?”

“Successful,” Kes said. “Stayed on the line until it went through, and then Queen Breha herself disconnected it, so I have her confirmation that she got it.”

“Written or verbal?”

Kes gave the man a look. “Verbal,” he said. “I didn’t take any files out of there. No recordings, they wiped the log right there, and told the Empire the equipment malfunctioned. I think we can’t use them again, though, the patrol was suspicious, too many incidents like that.” He had to stop, his voice was shaking. 

“Hey,” the sergeant said, and sat down next to him, not too close. He held out a flask. “Have a drink. Congratulations. That was some amazing work.”

Kes eyed the flask, then took it. It was Kmzir  _ arag _ , which always burned, but Kes knew the trick to drinking it without choking. Was the guy testing him? Really? Now? Fine. He took a healthy swallow and handed the flask back, then settled his face in his hands a moment. 

“You did great, kid,” the sergeant said. “If you want in, you can name your assignment.”

Kes thought about what Shara had said. “Okay,” he said. 

**Author's Note:**

> I finished this forever ago but wanted to get some more written on the next section before I posted it, but you know, I've forgotten how to write maybe? We'll have to see. Summers are so busy. I've been working on this series for over a year now, and I meant it to be a oneshot, so that tells you some things probably. Anyway. <3 <3 <3 to anyone still reading this, thanks for your patience on this wild ride.


End file.
